Default value 0 to prevent suppression of sub-report - reporting-services

Question

I'm fairly new to ssrs and I'm trying to creat a report with a sub-report which e.g. returns 3 fields / columns.
When I export this to excel it reads
A1 B1 C1
100 50 100
When there's no data / dataset returns no records all cells A to C are merged to one cell?
Which makes processing the file a real pain...
I've tried the norowsmessage but then I get one value in the merged cells.
Can't remember I had this with Crystal Reports?
Is there something I can do to always return the sub-report with the 3 columns in it so my layout is retained?
Thanks in advance,
Mike

Answer 1

I've fixed it by using a Union statement in my SQL string:
SELECT - SUM(QTY) AS EXPR1, - SUM(ENTEREDVALUE) AS EXPR2, - SUM(LINEAMOUNTMST) AS EXPR3
FROM DBS_SUPERVISOR.STOCKTRANS
WHERE (DATASET = 'CAT') AND (ITEMNUMBER = :myitem) AND (DATEPHYSICAL >= :VanDatum) AND (DATEPHYSICAL <= :TotDatum) AND (STREFERENCE = 0) AND
(DCTYPE = 1) AND (STATUSOUTFLOW = 1) AND (DCGROUP = 'GROUPX')
GROUP BY ITEMNUMBER
UNION ALL
SELECT 0 AS EXPR1, 0 AS EXPR2, 0 AS EXPR3
FROM SYS."DUAL"
WHERE (NOT EXISTS
(SELECT QTY AS EXPR1
FROM DBS_SUPERVISOR.STOCKTRANS STOCKTRANS_1
WHERE (DATASET = 'CAT') AND (ITEMNUMBER = :myitem) AND (DATEPHYSICAL >= :VanDatum) AND (DATEPHYSICAL <= :TotDatum) AND (STREFERENCE = 0)
AND (DCTYPE = 1) AND (STATUSOUTFLOW = 1) AND (DCGROUP = 'GROUPX')))
This way if the top part doesn't return a row the bottom part will return 3 columns with 0
Regards,
Mike